FIFA's lack of accountability may ensure its demise

By Michael Visontay

8 June 2014 — 1:59pm

Just who is FIFA accountable to? That is the key question in the wake of last week’s revelations regarding the 2022 World Cup voting process.

Football clubs are accountable to their national football organisations, who are in turn accountable to their governments. But who can keep a self-appointed supra-national organisation such as FIFA in line?

Illustration: michaelmucci.com

No one, not yet anyway. The world’s governing football body is based in Switzerland and operates with all the transparency of a Swiss bank, a closed shop cynically exploiting the fact football is now much more a business than recreation. With economic and political influence comes responsibility, and FIFA has shown none.

This is a practical as well as ethical mistake because, to be blunt, FIFA needs the world’s football powers more than they need it.

First to the ethics. The Sunday Times has exposed an email trail showing that Qatar’s former FIFA vice president, Mohamed Bin Hammam, ran a covert campaign to secure votes for the Qatar 2022 campaign, using a construction company as a front to bribe to football officials around the world. In NSW parlance, he makes Eddie Obeid look like small beer.

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After three years of denial and squirming, FIFA’s response has been to hire a well-credentialed US lawyer to conduct its own investigation into the bid process. However, with typical arrogance, FIFA has not even committed to publishing the lawyer’s report. Whatever findings he may make, we may never know the truth and, if they do publish it, we will forever be wondering what they didn’t tell us.

FIFA has reached its use-by date and world football has come to a fork in the road. If FIFA agrees to re-run the bid, it would restore some credibility but risks a huge loss of face for the members who voted for Qatar, and lead to calls for their sacking, as well as that of president Sepp Blatter, to wipe the slate clean.

Then there are the potential legal repercussions from Qatar, which may try to recoup the money it has spent over three years since winning the bid in 2010. Qatar has much more money than FIFA and can take it to court, threatening its financial viability through protracted legal proceedings. A court case then opens the possibility of confidential documents being aired. You can see what’s at stake.

As attractive as that may seem, the alternative is perhaps even more interesting. If FIFA resists the pressure to re-open the bid, it risks open revolt from national football associations, most notably the English Football Association, which is still livid about the way the twin 2018-2022 bids were conducted.

FIFA was openly hostile to the English bid for the 2018 tournament over the robust British press and its critical reporting of the bid process. In effect, FIFA told the English FA to censor its media or else, as if that was an appropriate, let alone feasible, thing to do. The Sunday Times now reminds us why that was such a bad idea.

This raises the prospect that every football administrator dares not utter: a boycott of the next World Cup and, beyond that, an exodus from FIFA led by the world’s leading leagues, who then set up a new global governing body, one founded on principles of transparency and accountability.

A few years ago, the formula one racing teams tried but failed to break away from Bernie Ecclestone’s iron control of the sport. But formula one has direct commercial contracts with racing circuits and infrastructure that FIFA does not have. It piggybacks on the loyalty of national football leagues, which have the direct financial relationship with grounds, clubs, media and marketing.

If the national football associations of England, Germany, Spain, Italy and France withdraw from FIFA, others will soon follow suit. Football Federation Australia may be reluctant to do the same now it has a glimmer of a second chance to host the tournament in 2022. But with the right leadership from Europe, what can FIFA do to staunch a walkout? It can trademark a name but so what?

The last 20 years have seen a welter of new sports events that have quickly become household words: T20 and IPL cricket, Super 12 Rugby. If the national leagues want a new World Cup and regional governance structure underneath it, there are plenty of precedents for constituting new organisations and competitions with their own names. Australia killed off the NSL and re-emerged with a stronger entity, the A-League.

Doing this globally is basically the same process, just bigger.

The world is still recovering from one GFC. Now it faces another: the global football crisis. The global football community needs to show FIFA that unchecked corruption will bring down the game in whose name it governs. If that sounds like hype, look at the NSW ALP.

Michael Visontay founded and taught a course on Sport, Media and Culture at the UNSW.